Nixon's "crimes" were somewhat vague and his lies were not really that big of a deal in the long run. As most people agree, it wasn't so much that the incident at Watergate occurred but that afterward he tried to cover it up. General concensus is that if he had been frank with the nation it would have blown over. His biggest usurpation of power and the final straw was when he called for the outright firing of the federal prosecutor. That resulted in at least two high level cabinet resignations in protest.

All in all, Nixon had good intentions. He just went about it the wrong way.